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The Year in Politics 2006

3 Best Downtown Personalities We’d Like to See Challenge for the Mayor’s Office (besides Christopher X. Brodeur)The Reverend Billy His dedicated (though never humorless) anti-consumerist tub-thumping would mark a radical departure from the current nabob’s love of the corporate business model-as-government. And he has a gospel choir.

Blackface Jesus What more do you need? He’s the Son of God! And he uses a dubious gimmick with racist overtones to perpetuate his limited, local fame! Taylor Mead This former Factory star-turned-performance poet would begin by overturning the smoking ban and would then have a series of really good parties at Gracie Mansion. And that’s about it, we suppose.

Best “Huge Failure” That Ever Happened to New York
The Loss of the 2012 Olympics (which happened in no small way thanks to Shelly Silver’s vetoing of the West Side Stadium proposal). A successful Olympic bid would have served as carte blanche for city and state governments to greenlight ridiculous developments up and down the waterfront, crying “eminent domain” at the top of their lungs. That’s still happening, but less so.

3 Best Potential Presidents From NYC Municipal Politics
Peter Vallone Jr. Sure, this Democratic city councilman from Astoria has some pretty outlandish ideas, but if he made it to the White House, one of those ideas just might happen: the secession of New York City from New York State, which he proposed in both 2003 and 2006. And we think that would be great… President Vallone Jr….Sheldon Silver Beyond the obvious coolness factor of having a tough-talking Jew from the Lower East Side named Shelly in the White House (best Easter Egg hunt ever), as Speaker of the State Assembly over the last decade, Democrat Silver has been a stalwart counterbalance to Pataki’s Red State tendencies, and Bloomberg’s development lust. And he’d probably appoint Joe Bruno as Secretary of State.

Cory Booker We understand that Newark is in New Jersey, and therefore, Mr. Booker (the city’s new mayor) doesn’t qualify as a NYC politician. However, we like him so much we’ll make an exception. Beside the fact he’s the only one on this list who might actually make a run at the Presidency some day, Booker’s aggressive reform ideas and legitimately hands-on approach to governance reminds us of a young Bobby Kennedy. Sigh.